Archives for May 2012

I was pleased to hear recently that I am not alone in arguing that the charity sector needs to reclaim its independence.

According to Matt Scott of the National Coalition for Independent Action, it has ‘become predatory rather than collaborative’ as the big beasts of the sector compete for, and win, contracts. That’s life, you might say. And yet, a recent report suggests, we are generally more giving of ourselves than we think.

We are too often portrayed as a conflictual, competitive bunch. So says Charles Leadbeater, author of a report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research. From the Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’ to Adam Smith’s faith not in the ‘benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker’ but in ‘their regard to their own interest’. From Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene to ‘its intellectual twin’ of neoclassical laissez-faire economics. The ‘assumption of selfishness’ needs to be replaced with a new assumption, he says. ‘We are, first and foremost, reciprocators and cooperators’.

We are social and moral beings predisposed to act according to a commonly held sense of fairness. He cites social dilemma studies that repeatedly demonstrate this, and developmental psychologists who show that even infants not yet able to speak are capable of empathy. The history of civilisation is one of the spoils not of war and conquest, but of our capacity for cooperation and its ‘generative’ potential. Which all sounds very good but, says Leadbeater, in a society ‘unequal and riven by divides’ this apparently commonly-held facility to get on with each other is under threat.

‘For decades we have been used to addressing problems through the lens of selfishness and the market’, he claims. Last year’s riots in London, Birmingham and Manchester were in keeping with a ‘moral tone set by bankers who pocket massive bonuses, politicians who fiddle their expenses, and journalists who think nothing of hacking into others’ phones’. An ‘orgy of opportunistic, selfish materialism, is lurking just beneath the surface’ and ‘ready to erupt at any moment’. Which is simultaneously true and wide of the mark.

Blaming ‘selfish materialism’ for the unseemly behaviour of people in hoodies and pinstripes alike has been the Left’s all-purpose excuse for its own political bankruptcy since the days of Thatcher. Likewise its disgust with the Murdochs betrays a distaste for those that abandoned it all those years ago. But this wider sense of unease briefly but violently brought to the surface during the riots is really worth getting to grips with. Leadbeater is right to be disturbed not by a liking for expensive sportswear and electrical goods, but that the rioters ‘revelled in their disdain for the norms of civil society’. It did appear for a moment that society was indeed broken.

Bizarrely he thinks the famously pointless (and I’d presumed departed) Occupy movement might be able to put it back together again by ‘reasserting norms of decency, cooperation and reciprocity’. Alternatively he hopes that a ‘relatively small group of super-altruists’, by which he must mean those apparently predatory charities, will come to the rescue. But in the end he settles for people like him (and me, to be fair) – policy wonks – to make the ‘cooperative correction’ and promote ‘everyday civility’. For Leadbeater, we don’t cooperate at the drop of the methaphorical hat. We are merely ‘conditional cooperators’. The only trouble is that those conditions are, apparently, missing. The role of policy is to ‘restore those conditions’ and ‘build on intrinsic motivations towards cooperation’.

So, despite cooperation being ‘intrinsic’ and, therefore, built into our very being, things have got so very bad that the wonks must intervene. There are five conditions but I’ll leave you with just one. Number two says: ‘Reliance on formal rules can drive out the day-to-day give-and-take of people adjusting to one another and learning to get on’. In other words, its not just charities who need their independence, and the likes of Leadbeater (and me) should but out.

Dave Clements Limited

I am a writer and consultant with over fifteen years experience working in senior strategic, management, project and engagement roles, and advising local government, the NHS and other public sector and VCS organisations. I am available for commissions.